well once again the steamroller at uniprint has dropped off another steaming pile of shit right into my monday morning hands – thanks!

do you ever sit in your first lecture on monday morning, wondering where the weekend went, wondering what the lecturer is on about, and pull out critic magazine and read it? then you’re a terrible student and you probably deserve to fail. but at least it was entertaining for a short time, to bask in the glory of amy josephs critic

this weeks installment tackles a few issues which are relevant.. good I guess. shall we dive in? shall I bless you with my opinion? I tell you what I won’t bless you with – scans of this critic. mainly because there is nothing interesting to scan, you’ll have to fetch critic for yourself this time so you can follow my “what to deride” handbook in this handy internet form

facialbook in the link
well not just the link, all over the uni. get better internet university. don’t make students use it less, just fix it. if they’re using it so much, it must be because they want to be using it. if you take it off them, it will annoy them and the only winners will be no one. or charge more. we know you’re going to charge more anyway, just charge even more on top of that

international student costs rising
it’s about time
not really. it’s pretty extreme. I don’t know what to say about it though as I’m uninformed on the topic. surely they do it for a reason, but what that reason is I don’t know. why am I even bringing it up?

abe gives us a nice wee story about cannabis
420 protests and the related issues
if you’ve been reading this site for any length of time you’ll know (and love) my position – cannabis should be a health issue not a legislative one. so what abe says is something I can more or less agree with. and in fact the only reason I’m making light of this, is that this is what the otago darknet is here for. because sometimes things that shouldn’t be illegal are. and protection in those instances is vital
(note: I’m not saying that so that people start dealing on the net – I just think these are instances where levels of secrecy and safety are required)

pass the source
I think they misspelt “pass the sauce”. here’s an “interesting” wee article all about open source software and it’s benefits. they also mention this site as one that is equally as time wasting as “facebook” and “digg”.. the only problem there is that no one uses digg.. but still thanks!
I have a bit of a perspective on open source software. I tend to be a bit of a capitalist/pragmatist in this situation. I’d use open source software because it’s better, not because it’s cheaper. which means that until recently I used firefox instead of IE (IE is shit), but lately I’ve been using google chrome, because it’s fast. firefox has nice extensibility, but that’s it really. it’s slow. they’re both still better than IE, but the point of the story is use the best tool for the job, and in most cases that means heading on over to the pirate bay (or whatever tracker you choose) and downloading the software
for most people the OS is not an issue. computers don’t come without OSs unless you go out of your way to do so, so that price is absorbed and invisible. and from there on, the choice is either to pay, pirate, or go free.
see out of those three choices, as far as the corporations are concerned, two of them are identical. see if you buy office MS gets $$. if you go open source, they don’t. if you pirate, they don’t either. so really, out of the two free options, piracy and open source, you then choose what is the best option. from a financial and practical point of view, piracy almost always wins. there are so many advantages and the disadvantages are small. and please note I’m not telling anyone to do this (please buy products – keep the cogs of consumerism turning no matter what you do), I’m just saying it makes sense.
because pirated goods are better in more than one way, since you get the benefits of decent software with none of the crippling anti-piracy measures intact, because you got a key gen. you don’t have to “dial home” to confirm it’s a legit copy, because the hacker did a good job.but enough of that immoral rant. open source software is good in concept, but it’s just not good. and that’s the problem. open office is pretty damn average. I used it for a long time, but gave up after it frustrated me with it’s little issues.
the guy recommends ubuntu. I’ve tried out ubuntu a number of times, I even had them send me some CDs like 5 years ago. but like linux always is, it’s just too hard for regular people.
recently I tried to make a usb OS, with kubuntu on it. I looked up how to do it, ran the kubuntu live CD, and when I went to download the files, I realised it hadn’t connected to the internet, and wasn’t even trying, since it didn’t support my wireless card. so I started windows back up and found out I’d have to use a wrapper to wrap the windows drivers and somehow make that available to my cd based OS.. it was just too fucking hard. too much console time.
now I’m not saying I couldn’t do it. in fact you’d better fucking believe me when I say I could; once I got linux (slackware, none of that already-done-for-you bullshit) running with two monitors off two different graphics cards (AGP & IDE).. so the command line does not scare me
but it does put me off. and every time someone running linux has to do that, they lose a user.
but I know it’s not really their fault they can’t include that stuff due to licensing issues etc. unfortunately for them, that’s what they’re going to have to deal with first. make linux so it’s as easy to use as windows (all the time, even when shit fucks up) and maybe
what a rant sorry. I could go on but it’s boring. if you wanna debate this nick and adam it’s on; thanks for the nod btw

graffiti
until I got to dunedin I hated graffiti. that’s because in chch it’s just tags tagz and more tags. fuck I hate tags.
but I got here, and there was interesting special art which wasn’t so shit and devoid of anything worthwhile.
but this article is mostly about ‘toilet wisdom’, and I hear there’s a big “otago massacre” graffiti in the union girls toilets. good work to whoever did that. no doubt drunken/drugged at the time too – even better

and that is about it
another week of critic. sure there are more articles. the same shit every week. sometimes a chuckle comes out, but then I realise what just happened and I vomit. so yeah. don’t bother reading past what I commented on. in fact don’t read that – I don’t want you judging what I wrote based on the source material

Guilt Upon Accusation“This would force the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of Copyright infringement. As former Minister Judith Tizard stated, they will “cut off anyone who might be breaking the law”. This law, called Section 92, is so far-reaching that accusations can cut off a hospital or school’s internet connection without a trial.”

this is serious shit. it’s probably going to go ahead despite all the people that stand against it. you might lose your internet connect because you might be using it to break the law. none of this “innocent until proven guilty” shit.

what can you do about it? sweet fuck all really. here’s a link to the foundation of people who want to change this and a way of telling people you care via a ‘blackout’ scheme which is about blacking out your facebook image. is this going to achieve anything? probably more awareness but I have no faith in the ability of our government to give a shit about what the people want so while it’s a good awareness scheme, I don’t think it’ll change anything. that’s a shame really, rights are taken away from us every year and no-one stands up and when they do nothing happens.

once again society turns to crap. not that it’s ever been better, but you know. just don’t say you weren’t warned